John Oliver tackles the Sacklers: the litigious, secretive billionaires whose family business engineered the opioid crisis

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/04/18/celebrity-interpretaton.html

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Sacklers: They were aptly named for scumbags they are, me thinks.

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If you’re not familiar with the exceptionally well-researched podcast “Behind the Bastards” then perhaps part 1 of a deep-dive into the Sackler family can help introduce you to the top-notch journalism of Robert Evans.

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Indeed.
I’m not shocked by much anymore, but this episode was rather shocking to me.

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The clip of MIchael K. Williams as Sackler nonchalantly eating a sandwich during the deposition is enraging.

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John Oliver is a national treasure. I am so glad we stole him from the brits!

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The video shoes as “unavailable” for me.

So sorry to hear you are not in the US?

Question at large: Does HBO restrict their streaming service to US customers only?

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Works here… Could be a GDPR thing?

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NYT had a nice summary of the Sackler story as well, a couple weeks ago

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Geoblocked - here is a long cut of the the depositions part: https://youtu.be/fHii-R0REzQ

As one commenter noted - grab your Emmy on the way out.

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No, I’m in America. I thought it was down for everyone. Weird.

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The VPN in Opera is great for this kind of thing.

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Can someone explain the joke at 11:07? (Oliver says “there’s only so long anyone will watch someone at a desk reading court documents, trust me, I know that” and the crowd chuckles knowingly)

What is the specific thing he’s referring to?

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John Oliver and his writers do a lot of research for each episode. I took it as a reference to the many video depositions and hearings Oliver has likely subjected himself to in the service of finding useful information.

For example…

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I followed the link to the Gallery Page. I can watch them there despite living in the Olde Country.

@ctag I couldn’t watch the video in the link either, but went to the gallery site, linked to above.

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I’m a big fan of John Oliver’s show not just because they do good journalism but also because of the call to action he give in almost all episode.
I’m curious of the track record, is it effective ? Did the show had a lasting and concrete impact ?

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The gallery worked for me too! It looks like they host the files away from Youtube.

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His show single handedly brought down the FCC comment servers when he did an episode on net neutrality. Didn’t change the final decision the FCC made (because they lied and claimed those millions of comments weren’t real and the collapse of their servers due to the public outrage was a DDOS attack), but it certainly shows the power of the show to reach the public.

Right now the problem isn’t reaching the public, though. It’s changing the minds of politicians, who seem hell bent on ignoring public will in all things, despite the popularity of a course of action (ie, net neutrality; stronger background checks for gun sales; medicare for all style healthcare). The big money donors control the GOP entirely, and much of the DEM party as well.

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The best performance of Michael Keaton since Beetlejuice.

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